Pétanque balls are made of metal, and about the size of an orange; the playing surface is usually dirt, gravel, hard-packed sand and may or may not have a boundary. The object is to stand in a circle drawn in the ground, and roll; lob; throw your ball as close as possible to a small target ball called a cochonnet. Only one team gets points per round, and the teams play as many rounds as it takes to arrive at 13 points. The first team to arrive at 13 points wins.

Players divide into two teams. You can play 1 vs. 1 (3 balls per player); 2 vs. 2 (3 balls per player); or 3 vs. 3 (2 balls per player).
The teams flip a coin to see who starts.
The starting team draws a circle in the ground - then throws the cochonnet out to a distance of 6 to 10 metres.

The starting team then throws their first boule, trying to get as close as possible to the “coch”. Then the 2nd team's player stands in the circle, and tries to get their boule closer to the coch than the opposing team. They can try to do this by rolling their boule; lobbing it; or even throwing it at the opposing team's boule moving it away.
If that team does get a boule closer than any of its opponents, it's called "holding" - and then the opposing team has to attempt to throw a boule closer.
The team which does not have the closest boule (to the cochonnet) keeps throwing boules until either they get closest, or they run out of boules to throw.
When all boules are thrown, only the boules of the one team that are closest to the cochonnet are added to the running score. That is, if team-A "is holding" and has 2 of it's 3 boules closest to the cochonnet before the opposing team's boule (in this example, the 3rd closest boule), then team-A gets 2 points added to their score.

The teams continue to play until a team reaches 13 points (the team which had the point, starts the new round, drawing a circle around the position of the coch and uses that as the new throwing circle).